Abhishek Buchvani on play-to-earn games at PlayZap

0:01i'm ashton addison from block west capital for investment pitch media and the Crypto Coin Show and today on blockchain interviews we have abhishek vani co-founder and ceo of playzap abby welcome to the show and thank you so much for taking the time thank you thanks for having me very very happy to be here likewise i know playsap has an entire ecosystem of cool things that your team

0:25is working on it's going to be a lot to cover but let's start out the conversation just at a high level on you know your vision behind this when you started what is playzap all about and then we'll dive into the details sure so at really high level plays app is a play to one gaming platform where players can play multiple games and one app right they can play compete against each other

0:49on esports style format and they can win tokens and nfts right so that's the very high level but i'm going to give you the background about like how we started and what kind of problem we are trying to solve with this so i come from the gaming background working multiple you know gaming companies large publishers like gameloft and miniclip

1:08almost like more than 15 years now and we are essentially a game developer right when we started you know this is my second venture so what we see how we see this as a platform gaming is a very different way what people see from the blockchain industry right and we see the opportunity you know and the opportunity what we see when we started looking into a different

1:28kind of plate one gaming projects we see a common pattern which is the complexity right they're very complex they are hard to understand and for the users who who used to play my games early earlier they're gonna they're not gonna come to this platform to play right because they're so complex to play right and gaming as a as a medium is entertainment medium

1:48right it has to be much easier for users to understand adopt and play right and we understand the problem we see like you know if you go and see all the plate one gaming project maybe a top 50 you don't see them very easy adoption by the by the users right by the by the players who playing free to play business right and if you see a market size of when you just take it at

2:07mobile gaming at the market size which is going to be a 140 billion dollar market in next four years right out of that you have a 70 percent of the audience who play casual games they want to play a simple game they want to play our games on the mobile they can they're standing on a bus stand and there's walking towards the beach you have two minutes to play and all of that

2:25right and if you're all very bullish about crypto gaming or play to one gaming and metaverse etc and for the future and they're very bullish about gaming these users are these players gonna adopt this platform gaming sooner or later right it's a massive market size right and we understand the pain point of those casual users because they want simple

2:43stuff right and what we position ourselves to put ourselves into in the shoes of you know the behalf of game developers is to give them a simple platform a gaming platform to play compete with your against you know your friends or your community and win tokens and nfts right so please have essentially built out in that vision and we are trying to

3:08keep it you know very very simple what we understand we're gonna we're gonna build it and for our users as well we're gonna keep it multi-gaming apps it's not gonna be a one-game focus it'll be multiple casual games under one platform so you can play you can choose whatever games you want to play you can engage and retain yourself a longer period of time and

3:26and as i said like you know we're going to keep it competitive you know and because the whole paid one gaming industry is very compelling community driven so keep it very very competitive in a way that you're always competing against someone you're not playing alone right and all the games what we have built across the platform they are very competitive right they are optimized for

3:43the skill based gaming so you control the outcome you know you know what you play right so that's what the skill gaming is all about so we're trying to keep that you know keep the balance between this and try to engage those audience and build for the future great intro abby and you're completely right about you know casual games and easy to play games for the bulk of

4:05what i've seen in play to earn games coming out you know they look incredible but they are very intricate games that it seems like these game studios have been working on five years just for this game and it's so intricate that you really have to be committed if you're going to be playing it you know those people are anticipating playing for hours or days of play time and there

4:25is a huge gap in play to earn in a game five right now for those candy crush kind of games or just quick game on your phone now with that said i want to dive further into you know the blockchain aspect player and nfts how do you balance that you know obviously gameplay is important and you mentioned there about your previous venture and having a game studio

4:48obviously that is very important to have a good game regardless of the blockchain technology but how do you incorporate that in and add it in as a value add well up so when when you build level of free to play games for the audience outside later on right we always focus about the economy right how to make sure that people are you know you know

5:06whatever they're getting as a virtual currency or virtual goods utilize in the gaming app and how they how they go about it right how do you build experience around those those in-app items right so we're gonna apply the similar kind of approach here although i said like you know it's gonna be more as the e-sport style comparative format so everybody who come on board we

5:25we have some free tournaments running for them right so you don't need to you know like like like other games you have to buy you have to invest a lot to you know get on those games etc right so we are building free to play actually free to play right so you can get on you can play those three tournaments if you're good at your skill you can win you know you know tokens

5:43are native tokens and you can go about playing the paid tournaments right so the paid tournaments it's it's something that you have to you know pay small token to enter right and when we collect those small tokens from all the users going to come to that tournament make a prize pool and then distribute the price bull back to the winners right so it's totally based on the skill not for

6:02your time because i have you know i've been asked so many questions about like you know how many how much you can earn per day right so if you're not building something that based on time you're gonna you're building something based on skill so if you're good at skill with your game and of course you don't need to invest a lot of tokens or your money do to play those games

6:21you can play for free can you practice yourself make sure you are you make a strategy for those games then you go about in a participant you're paid tournaments so think about like you know we have a tournament of like you know giving ten thousand tokens and you know we asked like this you have to put a five tokens to enter or just one token to enter right and you're competing

6:38against like 10 000 users players with a similar skill that you have and they are all playing the same game right and then you can see yourself on the leaderboard and then you can find out like hey you know i'm i'm i'm not good at this game i'm pretty best at the rank like 100th rank i probably need to do better right so the engagement of users coming back and playing those

6:56games again and again it's very high right drive the plate one philosophy what you're talking about because you know everybody wants to win right everybody wants to be on top of the leaderboard right so that's the fun part where we're gonna you know tag along the play to an economy and everything apart from that you know we are you know the second aspect of this plate

7:17one game is it's fantastic which is digital ownership right you give assets back to the users in free to play business you buy those virtual goods and virtual currency you use back in the game and then you are done right you don't have anything to hold on so this way we are we are trying going more deeper into how to give ownership to those those players and in the form of

7:35nfds right so we have a plan like a four-phase launch is for the nft so first phase going to go probably in the may end or june beginning of june and then we have like a three more phases of planning of those nfts so player can really own those those virtual goods and this let's start that what we're building here very cool i really like that and

7:54definitely a good strategy with the play to earn to make sure that you know people that are playing casual games they don't have to invest their life savings with some of these player and games you know it seems like the more you are investing the more potential you have to earn really quickly but some people just want to play games and earn a little bit and own and more

8:14importantly own the items in the game as you mentioned about the nfts coming up as well that's really exciting now you mentioned upcoming nft drop now i want to get a better time frame on the games itself are the games also not launched yet we are about to launch the beta version probably around the dge so probably a beginning of may and mid of

8:37may and sometime moment we go after tg we're going to launch the full version along with the tokens etc and we're going to launch drop our first nft sale right the first nft sale we are launching is called z passes so basically these passes that user can can can purchase and they have like a lot lifelong a value on play's app right so and there are cool benefits i can't

8:57talk right now maybe but i can give you a little bit of detail about like you know what these passes are so these passes are both mostly a premium membership on the platform right so if you own those passes you have access to the premium tournaments then another other user won't have it right you have you have access to play to

9:17earn in the context of play to earn which is which is very very much beneficial for you to earn little more than other users right for a long time for life long right so for example we have some freebies of spin to win right so spin to win gives you small token rewards every single day you come back because because of the loyalty you show towards the platform but if you

9:40are you own that certain nfd a certain pass then you get you get a little extra right so we are trying to make sure that everything is designed such a waste it's in the context of play to one and then you can you know then user can unlock the value they want to unlock and as project grows think about the nfd value will also grow along with the project right you buy probably at maybe

9:58a five dollar nft today it can you know easily sell up you know the secondary market at hundred dollars or maybe thousand dollars right so that's what we're trying to create a long time value apart from these nfts we are we're also planning to do some cool love stars which we should call it zeros so these are gonna also unlock you know probably gonna

10:17you know will be available in next two or three months from now then we have an indium items in the form of marketplace let's say you played ball pool and you really love that game and you want to you know you want to own that certain stick certain queue right so that could be a form of nft that you can own it from the marketplace so these are the cool stuff that you're

10:34going to bring in on as we go very cool and now with players that are earning you know small amounts people that have started into tournaments they win they're collecting correct me if i'm wrong they're collecting the currencies in the game as well as some nfts and then you mention there the marketplace and how they're actually able to cash out yeah so basically you're right so you

11:01you play those tournaments you win tokens right when you win tokens you can go out to exchange and cash it out basically apart from that we're also making some sort of like in-game nfts unlock so this you know you basically play let's say one of the game you really like it a lot and you play a long period of time you want to really want to avoid reward you as nft let's say you

11:19play a solid here let's say you play like eight ball pool same size example and you win let's say 50 matches in that game you can you will be rewarded as a cool cool nft of that game that you only own it right so how cool is that we are rewarding users for based on their their performance and the loyalty of towards the game right and that's the reason for us to have a

11:38multiple games in the platform it doesn't make sense because you might like maybe one or two games but you're so passionate about playing it and others might like something else no definitely great point abby and you know i don't want to go too into the blockchain intricacies but i'm curious on the usability you know you mentioned obviously building the game first is a

12:00priority and not making it too technical now in terms of the blockchains how are you lowering the cost and making it easy for people to transact with the nfts in the game and in the marketplace well we are going with the chain which gonna gonna be more friendly for the players right so we have to be very very sure about like which chain we're gonna

12:19go with although we are multi-chain and i need to make sure that no the players gets benefited of any kind of chain you're gonna go with right so that's number one second we are keeping it very simple for as as your as a wallet integration on the platform so you're not making so complicated for you that you have to have a metamask wallet or some kind of wallet that you have to

12:36own it first and you know buy your token stuff etc if you come to our platform if you don't own any wallet we give you ability to buy our tokens directly from online services right so you don't you can you can have the same experience that like a free to play you know games you can have it buy those you know tokens and then straight get into the into the game you know

12:56and if you have a wallet and if you are like a avid crypto gamer let's call it you know then you can always connect your wallet and then you can see all the currencies you have and it can you know do the transactions from there right so we don't want to make it like very financial heavy sort of gaming app you want to keep it simple give it the kind

13:12of you know experience for the users great point abby and now looking from like a bird's eye view of just game fi and play to earn games moving into you know the gaming industry and having the whole gaming industry sort of convert to blockchain based gaming where do you see the industry overall you know this time next year and how playzap will grow into

13:37what will be the new version of the gaming industry well our long-term ambition to become a social medias right we what we are starting up right now with it's a gaming platform where you can come hang out you know socialize with your friends win tokens you know and some of the financial concepts you're gonna of course gonna apply from gamify to

13:55games which makes a lot of sense for us but our long-term ambition to become a social gaming metaphors where you can explore you can interact with each other you can think about like you're walking around or whatever and you find your friend or you find someone like you want to have a one round of you know match three candice kind of game right just

14:11get connected immediately you play that game after three or five minutes you come back and you just you know share emojis you know whatever and then you move on right from something else so really want to become like at that level and these casual users what we are building for is they understand this like they really want to have a fun of you know playing games socializing

14:30with each other and having fun you know in the virtual world so that's our ambition it's of course it's something that you we aspire to be but we have to take a first step with blazer what we're building right now and then we're gonna you know take it take it get there definitely and i really like i like that it sounds like games within games

14:50you know you're in the metaverse and you can go play a game and you can jump back and possibilities are endless so i'm really looking forward to seeing how that matures but until then there's a lot of work to do as well for the industry and for blaze app as well you mentioned the upcoming you know tge launch of the game nfts everything what is the best

15:09way for the viewers to follow along with playzap to get into the communities and to watch for these announcements well so the best place for us to get go to the website it's playzab.games pl why is that ap dot gmes is very simple you can join our telegram community china discord so they are very active there we share pretty much all the information that we want to share

15:31with the community we have some of the folks are very excited very passionate about it right so we have and as we go forward we gotta build a strong community we're gonna go more deeper into a game level kind of community engagement right so the discord and telegram is the best place for players to jump on most of the

15:51information will be available there but you can all follow us on twitter where we have more professional posts going on and the partnership etc we have a launchpad announcement also that's also happening right now at this point of time so if you are you know the certain launchpad that you have been you know buying tokens etc so you can join that launch where we can help you

16:10to get there and or if you don't know anything about launchpad it can help you to teach you how to buy those tokens etc so yeah great thank you so much abby i will leave all those links in the description box below as well all the best with the upcoming launch and everything in playzap and let's follow up in the near future thank you very much it was great great

16:30talking to you